On August 3, 2023, the Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Ministry of Education (MoE), and Union Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) jointly launched Study in India (SII) Portal which is an integrated one-stop solution for international student registration and visa application process.
- It was launched during an event in New Delhi, Delhi.
- This portal is guided by National Education Policy (NEP).
- This launch is on the lines of the Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s vision of re-establishing India as a global hub of education, and preferred education destination.
How will SII Portal be useful?
For international students who wish to study in India, this portal streamlines their registration, visa application, approval and course selection process through comprehensive information about the Indian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
Aim:
To simplify international students’ academic journey in India
Key Points:
i.It presents information on academic programs covering undergraduate (UG), postgraduate (PG), Doctoral level programs, and courses in Indian Knowledge System like Yoga, Ayurveda, classical arts etc. along with academic facilities, research support, and related information.
ii.It also has the provision for students to apply in more than one institute/course of their choice.
About SII Program:
i.It is a Central Government flagship program launched under the aegis of MoE in 2018. It seeks to attract more international students to India by promoting it as a preferred and affordable study destination with high-quality education. It aims to improve the overall standard of higher education in the country and facilitate access to various courses while showcasing academic excellence.
ii.The SII program involves partnership with educational institutes, fulfilling one of the following criteria, to enrol international students
- National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking (<=100)
- National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) accreditation score (>=3.01)
- Institutes of National Importance (INI)
Other Participants:
Minister of State (MoS) Dr Subhas Sarkar, MoE; MoS Annpurna Devi, MoE; MoS Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, MoE & MEA; among other senior officials Ambassadors of more than 10 countries.
Source: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1945442
MoE chose Oracle Cloud Infra to modernize DIKSHA
On August 2, 2023, MoE selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to modernize the national education technology platform Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA). This means, DIKSHA is transformed and migrated onto OCI under a multi-year collaboration agreement between both entities. It will help in making DIKSHA more accessible and lower it’s IT (Information Technology) costs.
- The DIKSHA migration project is being implemented by two Oracle Partner Network members viz. Bharti Airtel and Trigyn Technologies. DIKSHA will be deployed in the Oracle Cloud Mumbai region in Maharashtra.
Key Points:
i.This will also enhance Diksha’s security, and the ability to adjust to demand-based capacity, and can serve more students and teachers.
ii.The platform supports 1.48 million schools across all of India’s 35 states and union territories and is available in 36 Indian languages.
Need behind this:
MOE required a robust cloud service provider to handle the extensive data processing, storage, and distribution needs of the DIKSHA platform. It generates a huge number of logs for which they run Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK stack) for application diagnosis, performance, analytics and dashboards.
- OCI Compute VMs (Virtual Machines) and OCI Storage efficiently manage DIKSHA’s workload and store application content and performance logs.
- The application’s microservices are supported by Kubernetes clusters in OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE), with container images stored in OCI Container Registry.
About DIKSHA:
DIKSHA was an initiative of NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) under Minister of Education(MoE) in India.It was launched in 2017 as a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiative for school education and foundational learning.
- It uses Sunbird, an open-source platform by EkStep Foundation, to help teachers support inclusive learning for students in underserved areas and with disabilities all over the country.
- Every day, users watch 1.2 petabytes of text and video content from sources like NCER ,CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), and SCERTs (State Council of Educational Research and Training).
Recent Related News:
i.According to the 8th edition of India Rankings (India Ranking 2023), prepared by Ministry of Education (MoE) based on parameters defined by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras (IITM), Chennai, Tamil Nadu(TN), has topped the list for the 5th consecutive time.
ii.On June 2, 2023, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Ministry of Education (MoE) released the UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2023 for the establishment of more quality-focused deemed universities. These will surpass the UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations 2019.
About Ministry of Education(MoE):
Union Minister– Dharmendra Pradhan (Rajya Sabha, Madhya Pradesh)
Minister of State (MoS)– Annpurna Devi; Dr. Subhas Sarkar; Dr. Rajkumar Ranjan Singh
Note – Shri Dharmendra Pradhan serves as both the Union Minister of Education(MoE)and the Union Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSJE) in the Government of India.
